Jammie Thomas' third P2P trial looms; RIAA complains about cost

[p2p rules]

The recording industry has deep pockets, but even RIAA largesse has its limits. Case in point: the Jammie Thomas-Rasset peer-to-peer trial in Minnesota, the first of the file-sharing cases to make it all the way to a verdict. In two weeks, Thomas-Rasset will have an extraordinary third trial, and the recording industry is sick of the expenses it's ringing up to prosecute someone who (let's face it) is just never going to cough up much money.

Judge Michael Davis threw out the two previous verdicts; the second verdict absurdly ordered Thomas-Rasset to pay $1.92 million for sharing a couple dozen songs, and Davis slashed the award after trial to a mere $2,250 per song. Nine months after Davis made this decision, and mere weeks before the third trial was to begin, Thomas-Rasset's legal team has asked the judge to alter his ruling. Instead of cutting down the damages through "remittitur" (essentially, common-law judicial discretion), they want Davis to change his order and find that the damages were unconstitutionally divorced from the actual harm. This would end the trial phase completely; the case would be over, and appeals would suddenly become possible.

The RIAA is, to put it mildly, agitated by this last-minute maneuvering, and opposes it. "Thomas-Rasset’s request for reconsideration is based not on compelling circumstances, but rather on her desire to avoid another trial in this case, which she masks as an appeal to judicial economy," recording industry lawyers wrote this week. "What Thomas-Rasset really seeks is not judicial economy, but to avoid the possibility of another verdict by a properly instructed jury that reinforces the reasonableness of statutory damages well above the range she thinks is appropriate or constitutional."

Ars Technica
p2pnet

[DaBees-Knees]

Don't you just love that term "properly instructed jury". What they are really saying is a jury that fully agrees with what the RIAA says should happen. Anything else has to be an incorrectly instructed jury. I'll say one thing about the RIAA it does love to try and write the laws. The populace at large and their opinions count for nothing of course. The  RIAA have a very strange view on democracy and how it should work.